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British Forum for Ethnomusicology Book Prize

The biennial BFE Book Prize recognizes outstanding scholarship in ethnomusicology written in English. Both monographs and edited volumes published in the two years preceding each Prize are eligible to be submitted. (Co)authors and (co)editors must all be BFE members at the time of submission, while contributors to edited collections are welcome to join. No book may be entered more than once for this prize. This prestigious award carries a prize of £100.

NEW: 2018 BFE Book Prize - Call for Submissions

The British Forum for Ethnomusicology invites submissions for the BFE Book Prize to recognize outstanding scholarship in ethnomusicology written in English. Both monographs and edited volumes published in 2016 or 2017 will be eligible for the 2018 prize. (Co)authors and (co)editors must all be BFE members at the time of submission, while contributors to edited collections are welcome to join: https://bfe.org.uk/join-bfe

No book may be entered more than once for this prize. This prestigious award will be presented at the BFE annual conference at the University of Newcastle from 12-15 April 2018 and carries a prize of £100. The winner of the prize will also be invited to be on the panel for the next book prize.

To enter, please send THREE copies of the nominated book, together with a brief biography of the author(s)/editor(s) and contact email address by post to the Chair below. If the book is published as an ebook, or is only published as an ebook, then this will be eligible for submission and three hard copies will not be required. For ebook submissions, the Chair of the Prize Committee must be provided with full details of electronic access before the deadline (along with the brief biography of author(s)/editor(s) and contact email address), so that all the three members of the prize committee can access the ebook. If the committee experiences problems with accessing ebooks then the submission may be disqualified.

Deadline: Friday 10 November 2017 at the latest. Hard copies of books must be received before this deadline. In the case of ebooks full access details must emailed to the Chair before the deadline.

For books scheduled to be published in November or December 2017, a pdf of the entire book manuscript can be submitted by the 10 November deadline to the Committee Chair by email, followed by submission of three printed copies of the book (or ebook access) asap after publication. Regrettably, the prize committee will not be able to return the hard copies of books submitted for the prize.

Contact Details for BFE Book Prize Submissions:

Dr Frederick Moehn

Committee Chair, BFE Book Prize

Music Department King’s College London

2C, South East Block

Strand, London

WC2R 2LS

United Kingdom

frederick.moehnkcl.ac.uk

Previous BFE Book Prize Winners:

2016

This prestigious award was presented at the BFE Annual General Meeting during the BFE annual conference at Kent (April 2016). The BFE book committee (Trevor Wiggins, Rachel Harris, and Chloe Alaghband-Zadeh) worked long and hard during the selection process, and were impressed by the extremely high quality of many of the books. The books were written by authors from diverse institutional backgrounds on subjects spanning the breadth of the current ethnomusicological field. The BFE is grateful to all those who submitted books to this competition and looks forward to future contributions.

Iranian Classical Music is the product of a long journey by the author from her PhD to recent research, revisited in the light of post-colonial theory, and interrogates many aspects of theory through the lens of the study of musicians and their practices. It aims to understand musical creativity as meaningful social practice, to find an approach through Iranian creative practice that overcomes the composition/improvisation dualism and undoes the logic of alterity. As well as the detailed engagement and analysis of Iranian music, this monograph is located within a theoretical discourse that includes issues relevant to all ethnomusicological research, including a critique of binaries (ethno/musicology, West/East, folk/art, us/them, individual/collective), connections between musical and linguistic cognitive processes, music/linguistic grammars, the motor/body creative impetus, and defining terminology when moving between languages. The structure of the book is clear and logical and the notational examples are fully supported with an included CD. The writing style is very clear, dealing with complex issues and explaining them, showing great awareness of issues of language and communication with a wide readership.

Laudan Nooshin is Reader in Ethnomusicology in the Music Department at City University London, UK. Her research interests include creative processes in Iranian music; music and youth culture in Iran; music and gender; neo/post-colonialism and Orientalism; and music in Iranian cinema. Recent publications include Iranian Classical Music: The Discourses and Practice of Creativity (Ashgate Press, 2015), the edited volumes Music and the Play of Power in the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia (2009, Ashgate Press) and The Ethnomusicology of Western Art Music (2013, Routledge), as well as book chapters and journal articles in Iranian Studies, Ethnomusicology Forum and the Journal of the Royal Musical Association. Laudan is currently on the Editorial Boards of theMiddle East Journal of Culture and Communication (Brill) and Ethnomusicology Forum (Routledge). She is also a Council Member of the Royal Musical Association. From 2006–9 she was a member of the International Advisory Panel of the Journal of the Royal Musical Association and between 2007–11 was co-Editor of Ethnomusicology Forum.

Commendation Book Prize 2016: Villepastour, Amanda. The Yorùbá God of Drumming. Transatlantic Perspectives on the Wood that Talks. University Press of Mississippi, 2015.

The Yorùbá God of Drumming is a multifaceted book with an emphasis on collaboration, deeply immersed in Yorùbá studies. It shows meticulous attention to detail and is densely referenced, with a strong sense of passion for the subject. It supports writing from practitioners whose voices might otherwise not be heard, including them as the authors rather than informants, showing impressive editorial skill in making this a coherent book while retaining a diversity of experience and communication styles.

Amanda Villepastour trained as a composer at University of Western Australia then forged her first career as a keyboardist and songwriter with artists including Boy George, the Gang of Four, and Billy Bragg. Since completing her PhD in ethnomusicology at SOAS, University of London (2006), about sacred drumming in Nigeria and Cuba, she served as a founding curator at the Musical Instrument Museum (MIM) in Phoenix, Arizona. Villepastour is now a teacher/researcher in the School of Music, Cardiff University, Wales, and is the author of Ancient Text Messages of the Yorùbá Bàtá Drum (Ashgate 2010).

Congratulations Laudan and Amanda!

2014

1st winner of the BFE Book Prize (2014):

Novak, David. Japanoise: Music at the Edge of Circulation. Durham: Duke University Press, 2013.

This prestigious award was presented at the BFE Annual General Meeting during the BFE annual conference at SOAS (July 2014). The BFE book committee (Martin Stokes, Simon Mills, and Hettie Malcomson) worked long and hard during the selection process, and were impressed by the extremely high quality of many of the books. In total, 17 monographs and 9 edited volumes were received, totalling 26 books, published in 2012 or 2013. The books were written by authors from diverse institutional backgrounds on subjects spanning the breadth of the current ethnomusicological field. Over half of these books were published by UK presses, with entries also with Chinese, German and US publishers. The BFE is grateful to all those who submitted books to this competition and looks forward to future contributions. It especially wishes to thank the three judges who reviewed the submissions: Martin Stokes (Kings College London), Simon Mills (Durham University), and Hettie Malcomson, chair (Southampton University).